Mass Effect 3

[Rodéric]

Well I actually pretty much agree with "them" on the used games thing. I don't think this industry is like every other industry and thus comparisons don't work too well. I think the system they used in ME2 was good, but what they are doing now is pushing it over the line.

How is it different to a movie ? series ?
You buy it for a limited time enjoyment, you might not want to rewatch them, in which case you sell them, or you do want, in case you keep them.

For games, most gamers will reinvest the money they got back to purchase more games, therefore HELPING the game industry. (Because they need to add to that amount.)

There's no difference, it's only what some people with an agenda to steal from you would like you to believe.

(But I'm going off topic, should this discussion generate enough interest I'll move the posts to a new thread.)

 

[Rodéric]

The impression I get and one that I've always had from Ashley's physical in game model is that she's bi-racial (even in Mass Effect 3), in the that CGI trailer she looks like a full blown Caucasian. To say they are vastly different is an understatement.

She always looked caucasian to me... Since the first game.
But she does look different, I'm not sure whether her hair style is enough to make her feel so different or if they really changed her too much.
(Anderson does look different too, so does Liara, only Wrex and maybe Garrus looked the same.)

 

[AlNom]

Maybe I'll wait for the character to go on sale. I can always youtube the conversations or read the wikia, tbh. I'm not sure I would even use the character for gameplay purposes, ya know? I may very well stick with my favourites unless there's more balance in usage i.e. # of missions where a particular character is more useful.

Question is if the character ends up being as integrated as Zaeed/Kasumi or if it's more like a fully integrated character (which you'd think would be the case considering the nature of it).

 

[DuckThor Evil]

How is it different to a movie ? series ?
You buy it for a limited time enjoyment, you might not want to rewatch them, in which case you sell them, or you do want, in case you keep them.

For games, most gamers will reinvest the money they got back to purchase more games, therefore HELPING the game industry. (Because they need to add to that amount.)

There's no difference, it's only what some people with an agenda to steal from you would like you to believe.

(But I'm going off topic, should this discussion generate enough interest I'll move the posts to a new thread.)

Movies and series have more revenue streams. With movies it's cinema, rental, Disc sales and TV/adds, those add up and can support a title for a long time. The actual disc sales of movies aren't nearly as high percentage of the total amount of money a title generates. Books don't cost that much to make etc. Every other industry example has something different that makes the comparisons moot imo.

/half jokingly I have two hands and legs and my genes are 99% identical to a monkey, but I'm not very good at climbing and jumping in trees The point of course being that seemingly similar things can still be very different.

The used games fueling new game purchases is interesting and I agree it makes a difference. Value of a game will go down a lot if you can't resell, but I don't think they are going to drop new game prices, people will then have less money to buy new games. However in the case of Gamestop and such, they actually encourage people to buy used games from them, because it generates more profit for them than selling new games. For publishers it would be a lot better if people buy older games cheaply, but still wrapped in plastic.

One copy of a game when continuously traded in, can change hands at Gamestop over 10 times and they make silly amounts of money from that compared to the publisher/developer. Used games have become proportionally too large compared to new game sales, and something like that will always be a problem for the content creator side.

 

[AlNom]

On #ME3, content creators completed the game in January & moved onto the "From Ashes" DLC, free w/ the CE or you can buy seperately.

DLC has fast cert and no mfg., so if a team works very hard, they can get a DLC done in time to enjoy it with your 1st playthrough on day 1.

It takes about 3 months from "content complete" to bug-fix, certify, manufacture, and ship game discs. In that time we work on DLC.

Makes sense now.

I think I'm more concerned that this particular character was relegated to DLC status in the first place. I mean... really? :s

That said, I wonder who is actually going to be squad members now. There were so many in ME2, that it'd be hard to see them do justice with everyone we've used so far (assuming they lived).

And then there's the scenario of the squad mate either getting killed or never being activated (Grunt in stasis, Legion given to cerberus ). Even my Renegade character still used those two (he is not a narrow minded Renegade ).

 

[Rodéric]

Movies and series have more revenue streams. With movies it's cinema, rental, Disc sales and TV/adds, those add up and can support a title for a long time. The actual disc sales of movies aren't nearly as high percentage of the total amount of money a title generates. Books don't cost that much to make etc. Every other industry example has something different that makes the comparisons moot imo.

/half jokingly I have two hands and legs and my genes are 99% identical to a monkey, but I'm not very good at climbing and jumping in trees The point of course being that seemingly similar things can still be very different.

The used games fueling new game purchases is interesting and I agree it makes a difference. Value of a game will go down a lot if you can't resell, but I don't think they are going to drop new game prices, people will then have less money to buy new games. However in the case of Gamestop and such, they actually encourage people to buy used games from them, because it generates more profit for them than selling new games. For publishers it would be a lot better if people buy older games cheaply, but still wrapped in plastic.

One copy of a game when continuously traded in, can change hands at Gamestop over 10 times and they make silly amounts of money from that compared to the publisher/developer. Used games have become proportionally too large compared to new game sales, and something like that will always be a problem for the content creator side.

If people buy it second hand it's because they disagree on the price of the good.
If they want to hit that market, publishers need to make their game cheaper... (Whether reducing the starting price or having sales often.)

There's no reason games shouldn't be traded like any other goods, just increase your product value to compensate, don't lower it...
(Release patches, free updates... like Valve does, to keep your customers interested.)
[Valve found a way to make people buy once and not resell with Steam w/o pissing off their customers by adding value, not reducing (resell) value...]

For ME an incentive could be the Cloud, your games are saved there, linked to your account, you can share them with friends and use them in the next game. Obviously if you sell your game you loose what's there. Add some free bonus based on save games analysis, maybe a weapon for the most played class, some alternate costumes for most used team members and so on... (Or maybe if you play with them more than x hours to make some people happy.)
You don't need to do much to make people happy and that might be enough to make many people keep the games instead of reselling them.
(Some people may still want to continue their sell to buy a new game every week routine though, no reason they should be penalized.)

 

[MfA]

I pretty much agree with that. Sounds pretty lame to charge 10$ for a somewhat important character that is available at launch. edit 2. AlStrong had already mentioned that, but I didn't catch it.

He says this is a first ... which is half correct, the situation is very similar to DA2 though, where they had a day 1 DLC only freely available to people who pre-ordered ... which was pretty cynical for a game they knew was going to cause a lot of disappointment due to huge reduction in amount of content compared it's predecessor (also it was arguably shit, but lets stick to the non arguable stuff).

 

[Ghostz]

Day 1 DLC is one of those entitled arguments people have because they believe they own the rights to content they themselves didn't create. Really, if you don't accept the medium of exchange that content creators provide you can simply not buy the DLC. That's when their arguments fall apart. If people stopped buying day 1 DLC then they will would never make it.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The impression I get and one that I've always had from Ashley's physical in game model is that she's bi-racial (even in Mass Effect 3), in the that CGI trailer she looks like a full blown Caucasian. To say they are vastly different is an understatement.

Our characters are about 99% consistent with Bioware's ingame models in terms of geometry. We do our own textures and hair, and Ash seems to have thinner eyebrows and less makeup compared to the game version.

However, most of the differences come from the rendering - we use far smoother, raytraced global illumination, reflections, shadows, and subsurface scattering, not to mention the antialiasing and texture filtering. Realtime algorithms and quality settings are just that far behind - less apparent on hard, reflective surfaces, but more obvious with soft shading and smoother reflections.

Oh, and Ashley also pouts or something but that was the animators.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Day 1 DLC probably has it's own separate budget and thus it needs to earn its own income to cover the costs. Even if they ship it on the same disc, it's just a more convenient delivery method and doesn't make it a part of the standalone game.

Sure, it's business stuff and I can see how it confuses people. If anyone has objections, I can only agree with Ghostz - don't buy it.

 

[AlNom]

hm... actually, I thought it was a 700MB download on XBLM (when it appeared accidentally).

 

[MfA]

Day 1 DLC is one of those entitled arguments people have because they believe they own the rights to content they themselves didn't create.

The issue isn't day 1 DLC ... the issue is the hard sale technique to get you to buy before real reviews are in (ie. giving a large discount on day 1 DLC for pre-orders or in this case collector editions). Some small item pre-order bonuses are one thing, but just carving out a big part of the game and charging extra after release day gives developers incentives for long term self-destructive behaviour.

If you have to rely on hard sales techniques then you're almost certainly in decline ... a rival to Blizzard or Valve they are not.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Has there been any info on the character import process with regards to stat bonuses etc.? What about the cerberus network code thing. Do they have an online pass code now or something different in place to gather money from used sales?

 

[AlNom]

What about the cerberus network code thing. Do they have an online pass code now or something different in place to gather money from used sales?

Based on the 360 box opening, it looks like they're just going with the EA Online pass.

 

[Scott_Arm]

There is a day 1 DLC for an additional character? I hope it's cheap and worth buying. Not a big fan of day 1 dlc.

 

[AlNom]

800 space bux. :s I guess that's um... nearly 43% inflation compared to Kasumi. I won't get my copy of the game until a day or two after the release date, so hopefully forum people will talk about how it compares.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Maybe they'll accept my dad's pile of Canadian Tire money.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Based on the 360 box opening, it looks like they're just going with the EA Online pass.

I wonder whether you need to have the online pass also for getting the DLC packs or just for the multiplayer gaming? I care about the additional character, but I don't care about the multiplayer. They should have handled it like they did with Zaaed.

 

[Ghostz]

Our characters are about 99% consistent with Bioware's ingame models in terms of geometry. We do our own textures and hair, and Ash seems to have thinner eyebrows and less makeup compared to the game version.

However, most of the differences come from the rendering - we use far smoother, raytraced global illumination, reflections, shadows, and subsurface scattering, not to mention the antialiasing and texture filtering. Realtime algorithms and quality settings are just that far behind - less apparent on hard, reflective surfaces, but more obvious with soft shading and smoother reflections.

Oh, and Ashley also pouts or something but that was the animators.

That's probably just it: the level of sophistication outpaces the in-game assets. I always had a problem with BioWare's ability to do character models. I thought they were getting better at it.

On a separate issue I think the Japanese far out pace our ability to do really believable in-game character models. Resident Evil 6 is looking really good on that front. I mean you have the occasional Naughty Dog that does really good character models but we really don't put the budget behind it.

 

[Ghostz]

The issue isn't day 1 DLC ... the issue is the hard sale technique to get you to buy before real reviews are in (ie. giving a large discount on day 1 DLC for pre-orders or in this case collector editions). Some small item pre-order bonuses are one thing, but just carving out a big part of the game and charging extra after release day gives developers incentives for long term self-destructive behaviour.

If you have to rely on hard sales techniques then you're almost certainly in decline ... a rival to Blizzard or Valve they are not.

Blizzard has a completely different type of publisher and I doubt BioWare has trouble selling their games. Seeing as they are probably making more money than they ever had.